Official News page 6

CHRISTMAS NEWS: CHRISTMAS CARD MOONS ARE RUBBISH

by Hazed

An astronomer has taken Christmas card designers to task for their inaccurate depictions of the moon.

Peter Barthel, from University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is one of those people who notices mistakes that others might not. For example, Christmas cards that show penguins and polar bears hobnobbing, when in reality they are literally poles apart.

But as an astronomer, he's particularly annoyed by the way the moon is shown in Christmas pictures: it's often a waning crescent moon, which looks like a letter C. But in the northern hemisphere, that kind of moon doesn't rise until around 3.00am, so isn't likely to be shining down on carol singers or children playing in the snow.

If you want to see an example of what he's complaining about, take a look at this article and check out the advent calendar used as an illustration. There's the familiar crescent moon, thin and waning, but the shops are all open and children are singing carols. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Barthel has put this pedantry to good use by penning a paper for the journal Communicating Astronomy with the Public, in which he surveys images of the moon found on Christmas cards, wrapping paper and children's books.

Sadly, I doubt this is going to get artists to pay more attention to scientific fact...

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